


to fill with light

by sunbirds



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M, Rating May Change, Sort Of, the terriku beauty and the beast au nobody but me needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 22:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18926440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbirds/pseuds/sunbirds
Summary: Riku can't wait to get off of this rock.He's going to go to new places, try new things, find out what he wants out of life. Rescue his friends from ending up in the belly of a beast by firmly offering himself up instead.It's not in his itinerary, but it happens.





	to fill with light

**Author's Note:**

> i'm really hoping i only have one more chapter in me, but who knows. we'll make this journey together.
> 
> i've been jokingly calling this my terriku shrek au
> 
> this chapter was fun to write but it's... it's a little dull! maybe that's just because i felt i took forever to write it.  
> as always, unedited, because writing is enough of a pain in the ass on its own. lmk if the mistakes are horrendous and distracting

* * *

 

The moment he has the means to, Riku ventures off of Destiny Islands.

 

Sora and Kairi join him, perhaps not expecting that his sense of wanderlust runs so rampant and he’s not so sure that he intends to make the return trip with them if he finds what he’s looking for out here. He doesn’t know what it is yet, but he knows he has to give looking for it a shot or he’ll never feel right about it. Living on the islands without ever knowing.

 

He’s felt like a fish in a net ever since he was old enough to hold onto the memory of leaning too far over the side of Sora’s father’s fishing boat and watching hundreds of them be corralled into place by the current, helpless to do much but struggle and flop in the mesh. Maybe not quite so dramatic, but later when he’s learning the ropes on how to set and retrieve the nets, the idea keeps coming back to him. It sticks uncomfortably against his ribs and settles there like plaque for his heart to bump into every so often when it beats too hard with restlessness.

 

It’s good to be on a boat with a destination that isn’t to a blank patch of ocean where fish can be found or to one of the smaller islands that line the surrounding areas off of the coast of the island everyone calls home. Most of Destiny Islands’ population is content to stay there forever even though they’re well aware of a landmass a ways off where business is booming and new technology is churned out every day. They’re lucky to get a taste of it on their comparatively small, very small, chain of islands, but there isn’t much of a need for big machinery or fancy means of communication with too many options when everyone knows everyone and the houses are close together. A helping hand is just a dirt-paved sidewalk away.

 

Destiny Islands is a place for quiet living and a somewhat thriving tourism industry; Riku’s ready for a change of pace.

 

Kairi used to live there, where they’re going. Says there’s a reason she and her grandmother had moved along; that it was too fast of a lifestyle and she can’t think of anything she misses. She seemed happy enough about a visit, though, perhaps hoping that viewing it through the lens of a new age will give her some fond memories to take home to her family.

 

“I’ve never been out this far,” Sora says, bent to rest his chin on his arms, which are folded atop the ship’s railing. Earlier, he’d been jokingly singing the merry little tunes they used to shout to the sky when his father finally let them take the rowboat out all on their own and they’d envisioned themselves as less-than-fearsome pirates taking to the seas. Now, he’s looking a little glum, and Riku can’t really blame him. There’s not much to see out here. Blue skies, blue ocean, ship deck. “I hope this place is worth it.”

 

Riku snorts at the same time as Kairi asking, “Weren’t you the one listing all the things you wanted to see and do and buy as we were boarding? And just a few hours ago, weren’t you singing non-stop?”

 

“Well, yeah, but I wasn’t thinking about how long it would take to get there. No wonder people don’t leave home, this is…”

 

He doesn’t finish the sentence, but he doesn't need to. They get it. It’s dull.

 

Riku’s really hoping this is worth it, too, because otherwise the ride back home afterwards is going to feel particularly draining, ocean taunting him as it surrounds the ship. A liquid cage and a pressing reminder that it’s all there is waiting for him back on the islands, too.

 

“You’ll like it,” Kairi promises. Sora is easily impressed, so it’s probably not a promise that will be broken.

 

Sora’s tone goes light and teasing as he pushes off of the railing to face where Kairi’s sitting. “Aren’t _you_ the one who always says that there’s nothing you can think that you miss?”

 

“Well…”

 

They banter, but Riku’s attention is elsewhere.

 

The long stretch of blue sky is finally broken in the faraway distance by a cloud he doesn’t remember seeing a moment ago. It’s white, fluffy, not so much an indication of rain, but the longer he watches with Sora and Kairi’s voices a drone in the background, the more clouds there are that join it, appearing from seemingly nowhere. The ship isn’t moving so fast that they could be throttling towards new water, new skies. It’s– weird.

 

He reaches out, putting a rough hand on Sora’s shoulder to turn him around again.

 

“Whoa, what’s the deal?! Don’t throw me overboard–”

 

“Look.” Riku points.

 

Kairi’s head turns, too, and then she’s standing to approach the railing with them. The clouds spread across the sky, almost melding into one big, confusing whiteness. The rest of the ship’s passengers are starting to take note now, too, especially as the sun’s once bright light is eclipsed and then engulfed, straining to radiate beyond the clouds and making everything look a little, more than a little, desaturated.

 

“That’s… Not normal, right?” Kairi asks it like she hadn’t passed every test she’d ever taken on weather changes. Worse, she seems to be directing it to Sora because she’s standing closest to him. Sora, sandwiched in between, looks at Riku. Riku looks over his head, at Kairi.

 

“No,” they all agree, simultaneous.

 

And then the clouds start to turn grey, darker and darker.

 

A majority of the passengers are islanders; there’s no delay in assessing dark clouds as a threat, a clear sign of a storm on the horizon. A panic _and_ an uneasy calm settle over the ship.

 

Plenty of these folks know what to do on a ship in bad weather, have lived and breathed it. Plenty of them also know that this knowledge guarantees nothing of their safety if the skies shudder with buckets of rain and the waves become strong.

 

But rain never comes and the water is frightfully still. Too still. There are some shouts towards the front of the ship about making preparations for if things start getting rough but otherwise everyone seems to be quiet.

 

He tightens his grip. One hand on the railing and one never removed from where it’s planted on Sora’s shoulder. In his peripheral, he sees Kairi’s hand drop from where she’s been wringing it nervously with the other to clutch at Sora’s instead.

 

Riku peers over the side of the ship. Sora and Kairi follow suit, no doubt as curious as he is about the water’s placidity.

 

The water is near black without the sky to brighten it to blue and, more notably, unmoving, not even rippled by waves or the boat pushing through it. Flat, like glass.

 

It gives him a feeling not unlike being young and sitting in one of the boats the tourists liked so much, with a wide glass panel in the bottom that he was distantly afraid would drop out from below if he stood on it for too long, all for seeing through to the ocean below and any fish and colorful corals they might pass by. He doesn’t see either of those things, now. It’s just clear and then grey and then dark, neverending.

 

The bottom drops out, and the boat goes with it.

 

* * *

 

He’s never been on a roller coaster. He’s heard about it, though, read about the feeling, and there’s a place they tacked up in their itinerary to visit while they’re on their trip that will give them the chance to experience it for themselves.

 

Once, a few years ago, some company had entertained the notion of taking over one of the islands that made up the Destiny Islands just to put up a theme park. It had been vehemently opposed on the grounds that Destiny Islands was about enjoying and preserving nature, not bringing about its ruin to capitalize on other interests for tourists. Dimly, he remembers some of his age group feeling disappointed, but overall, Riku can’t recall many votes in favor of it.

 

Dropping into the ocean is a bit like how he’s imagined it might have felt to be able to go on one back home, except not at all.

 

The boat seems to drop faster than they do, and their feet lift off of the floor of it. For a moment, Riku is afraid that the arm connected to the railing will pop out of its socket where it strains to keep him grounded, to keep Sora grounded, to keep Kairi grounded. He fights against the foreign force, the weightlessness, and sees them fighting, too, to grab onto each other and the bars, closer, tighter.

 

He’s not sure what anybody else is doing, and he hears no sound but the wind rushing past his ears.

 

_Wind, when they’d dropped into the sea?_

 

The speed is unnatural, the fall is too far, there is no water. His thoughts are racing.

 

And then there’s a feeling like going still after one has swam their way downwards, fought against the water to reach its depths and then decided to give it a rest, becoming buoyant again as the body is pushed upwards without having to give it a thought. Resurfacing.

 

That’s what they do, the three of them. Resurface.

 

He doesn’t feel wet until he thinks that he very well should be after bursting through the water and into the open air with his arms wrapped around his friends and their arms wrapped around him.

 

They release each other, scrambling to push away and make space to gasp for breath, but– he doesn’t feel out of it at all. They hadn’t nearly drowned and come back up, they’d just–

 

“What _was_ that?”

 

He can’t explain it, and neither can Sora, apparently. Kairi stares just as dumbfounded.

 

They’re not even in deep water. It barely reaches up to his hip bones. His hair is dry when he believes it shouldn’t be.

 

“Where is everyone? Where are _we_?”

 

Sora seems to be the only one that can talk. Riku wets his lips, turning to scan their surroundings.

 

“Is this the place,” Sora continues before Riku can come up with anything, “The Gardens, or whatever?”

 

“No.” That’s Kairi. She would know best. “Definitely not.”

 

Riku knows too, though, that this isn’t where they’re supposed to be.

 

It’s a river or a lake with a long stretch to it, he thinks. There’s a sound like water rushing hard. There might be a waterfall nearby, but he can’t make out many details other than banks on either side of where they stand and the trees high above them. Very high, angled, strange. It takes a moment to reconcile that with the slope of the land and realize that, wherever they are, they’re at the low point in a valley among mountains, and daylight is fading quickly.

 

_It doesn’t make sense._

 

They should be on the ship. Surrounded by the ocean. By other people. Even if the ship had capsized, gone down, whatever _that_ was, they should be adrift in the water or drowned. What they’d just experienced was nothing of the sort, unless this was the afterlife.

 

He says as much out loud, omitting the idea of death, and Sora and Kairi nod, subconsciously wading closer again in the water.

 

Riku makes for the bank in which the land looks the least dramatically sloped, carving out a path through the water with his somewhat larger frame and motioning for the others to follow right behind him. Nothing will grab them, probably, but who’s to say, when they’d just gone plunging through the water, through the air, through whatever that had been, and wound up here? He’d rather be the first to wind up in danger just to keep his friends out of it. If he could plant a pair of eyes in the back of his head to keep watch there, too, he would.

 

When they’re out of the water, there’s a moment of silence while they inspect one another in the dimming daylight, assessing for damages that simply aren’t there. It’s only them, with their half-wet clothes, standing around an unfamiliar place, completely fine otherwise.

 

“So… What now?” Sora checks his pockets as he talks, frowning at the emptiness. Riku has nothing in his own, he knows, but just watching Sora makes him check anyway. Pocket lint. Kairi shrugs, too, and he’s thankful that they’re taking this calmly when they should be freaking out, but it’s _frustrating_ that they have nothing to give them a lead on all of this. Call for help, find their way to civilization, something.

 

“I guess we walk,” Riku decides, “Hopefully we’ll run into others from the ship. Figure out where we’re at.”

 

“Walk where? Which way?”

 

Kairi’s right to sound skeptic. He’s not sure whether they should go towards the sound of the waterfall and find out if that’s what it is, and if it is just that, then if there will be anybody around it, or away from the noise.

 

“What about up?” Sora asks, tipping his head up as a method of pointing.

 

“... Yeah, that could work. At least until it gets too steep. It’s going to get too dark to risk stumbling. But maybe we’ll have a better shot at finding something with a bird’s eye view.”

 

So they start walking.

 

* * *

 

It takes less time than Riku expects for them to come across something worthwhile.

 

He’d almost bumped into Kairi’s back when she’d paused to stare, taking note of it first from where she stands slightly further along, jokingly having told her companions to break her fall if she went tumbling down, likely trying to ease the quiet tension. Riku takes it seriously, but now he almost regrets walking so close at her heels, if only because the sight is breathtaking and he’s taken aback enough that he thinks _he_ might be the one without anybody to break his fall.

 

Through the gaps in the trees and over on the horizon, no longer being obscured by the protrusion of land, is a sprawling world of mountains and valleys and rivers with what he can only describe as a castle in the distance. It’s architecture like he’s never seen before, from the houses and stony paths dotting mountainsides to the structure at the center of it all, one that looks like it shouldn’t be able to stand upright in the slightest, never mind the chains that stretch from it, that’s crafted of such materials that it seems to shine even with no sunlight left to illuminate it. The moon, then, bigger and brighter than any moon he can remember from any night on the islands, must play a role. When he blinks, he swears it changes shape where it hangs heavy in the sky, but it’s right back to how he’d first seen it when he spares it another glance.

 

“Whoa.” Sora does all of the reacting that he and Kairi are too awestruck to do, and quickly steps ahead of them, racing towards a better view.

 

“Sora, wait.” It doesn’t sound very commanding. He wants a good look, too, and Kairi’s not holding back either.

 

He sighs, trudging up to follow, and that’s when the earth starts to shake beneath his feet.

 

Sora and Kairi are close enough to reflexively grab onto one another’s arms to keep steady, but Riku isn’t so lucky. His foot catches on something– a root, a rock, he doesn’t know, but the footing is uneven and steep and it’s a combination that sends him to the ground, flat on his stomach and slipping with shape of the mountainside and what little traction the slick grass and dried remains of fallen leaves provide. Stray branches and stones scrape against his stomach and arms as he grabs for anything that will stop him from tumbling down.

 

He doesn’t think the fall will kill him, but it won’t be a pretty sight left at the bottom, and Sora and Kairi are shouting in surprise over something that he’d gotten just enough of look at to know it’s not him they’re worried about right now. He needs to get back to them.

 

It’s a tree that stops his descent, one that he knocks into and can use to pull himself back to his feet with, but by then it’s too late.

 

Higher up the slope, a tremendous, terrible beast has scooped his friends up into one massive hand. Were it not for the light of the moon, Riku doesn’t think he’d be able to make the silhouette out so clearly against the now-dark sky, but he doesn’t need to see much to know that it’s big, shaped almost like a man, and that it makes his heart leap into his throat. He swallows down the fear, and shouts at it.

 

“Let them go!”

 

The creature sets its gaze upon Riku as he comes marching back up towards it, glow from its yellow eyes dimming as they narrow at the sight of him.

 

“Let them go,” Riku repeats, getting his bearings now. Up close, the moon’s light shines through a heart-shaped gap in the beast’s chest, and that’s all he can see. A big, shadowy figure, two glowing yellow eyes, and the shine of the moon, so vast and bright that the yellowish light might as well be a part of the creature for how thoroughly it fills the cut-out.

 

It regards him without a word. Riku’s not sure if he’d expected any. He’s also not sure what he expects to do now that he’s standing before it, grass-stained and scraped up, with no weapon, dwarfed in size, friends in peril rather than standing steadfast at his sides.

 

The thing doesn’t move, doesn’t let go of Sora and Kairi though they struggle together in its grasp and shout at it, at Riku, clearly torn between telling him to run and wanting him to help.

 

He’s going to help, of course, even if he doesn’t know how yet.

 

He doesn’t think picking up rocks to throw at it are going to help his case, and he’s pretty sure he’s not big enough to make an impact if he throws _himself_ at it. That, and the beast– it hovers over the edge of the mountain rather than standing, torso trailing into something that’s more tail-like than anything. A spirit, Riku thinks, but not like any he’s ever seen in a game or heard in tales passed down by elderly neighbors, and he’d always thought that if such things were real, they wouldn’t be able to _hold anything in their hands_ .  


He doesn’t know if he’d phase right through it if he tackled it, but he knows he’d go soaring off of the mountain either way. All he can think to do is to… Talk to it. He has to listen to his gut, his heart, before making hasty decisions that might get his friends dropped to their deaths.

 

“Let them go.” He feels like a broken record. He puts his hands up in the air in surrender, taking one careful step forward. “Those are my friends. They’re important to me, and they’re not objects for you to mess with.”

 

The monster doesn’t look thrilled with the deal Riku is trying to cut. He inhales with purpose, hoping that filling his lungs will fill him with the courage to continue on with what he has to say, too.

 

“And if you put them down, gently, and let them be free, you can have me instead.”

 

It’s the logical option for himself. Two lives are worth more than one, and these lives in particular are well worth the cost.

 

“What? Riku! No!”

 

“You could be killed! Eaten!”

 

The monster tightens its grip, not visibly, but Sora and Kairi’s sudden shrieks have Riku preparing himself for the worst. For the sound of their bones cracking, for it to shake them around like toys or smash them against the mountain or drop them.

 

Instead, it brings them closer, seeming to inspect them.

 

“Please!” Riku shouts, not liking how close Sora and Kairi are to its mouth or how one misplaced finger could have them slipping out of the grip that’s keeping them from falling. “Just take me!”

 

“No! Go!”

 

“Don’t say that, Riku! We’ll be okay!”

 

It turns its head away from them while they scream pleas, holding them far from its body as it leans forward, close enough that Riku can make out its facial features more vividly, feel its warm breath on his skin. He holds his own breath and tries not to flinch when its other hand reaches to tap a finger at his torso. He’s not sure if it’s meant to be a push, but it’s a lighter touch than he’d expect from such a big creature and he’s shocked to find he can stand still through it.

 

“ _Please_.”

 

The digit lingers there. Riku’s heart beats frantically, terrified, and in the next instant, he’s being lifted off of the ground in one powerful swoop that he braces for in anticipation that it will hurt. It doesn’t, but its hold on him is tight. He turns his head–can’t turn the rest of himself well in this firm grip–and looks out for Sora and Kairi.

 

How messed up would it be, if they all got taken? At least they would know that he cares about them as they’re being eaten together. It’s not much of a comfort.

 

But the monster is putting them down, even though now they almost look like they want to cling on for Riku’s sake. He twists the best he can, wanting to get one last, long, good look at their faces before he meets an uncertain fate.

 

“Riku!”

 

“I’ll be fine! Head towards that castle! I’ll find you there!” He doesn’t want to think that the castle might be this thing’s home or home to something even worse. He wants, more than anything, to imagine it as a safe haven, and know that Sora and Kairi will be fine while figures out how he’s going to get out of this mess.

 

“How!? Riku!”

 

And then there’s a haze of darkness that quickly closes in on him. No more Sora, no more Kairi, no more bright moon or mountains or treetops or castles. Darkness.

 

* * *

 

It seems like a cruel joke that when the darkness gives way to light again–the gentle glow of a distant moon–he sees sandy shores and calm water.

 

It’s not home, he knows that even while clutched by this monster and unable to look at anything but juts of dark rock and the equally dark ocean with the moon’s light reflecting off of it, but it makes him think of it. Maybe he should have never left, if he was just going to wind up somewhere like it, but worse. Some nightmare version of it.

 

Well, he’d basically wished for an adventure. He’s getting one now.

 

The monster puts him down with the delicacy of one trying not to make a noise when setting a teacup back on its saucer. Riku pushes at its palm to urge it away, takes a step and then another extra cautious step backwards.

 

The view is clearer at this angle without the light behind the beast. He still has no idea what he’s looking at, from the blue gums and bared teeth to the protrusions sprouting from its head to what he can’t recognize as bandages or a _part_ of it surrounding its face, its torso. That’s what it is, mostly, torso, even if there’s a noticeable hole in it.

 

He looks away but still feels the creature’s eyes burning a hole through _him_ , following his movements. It’s troubling, but he’s been in one piece for this long. If it wanted to hurt him, eat him, shouldn’t it be doing so by now? At the very least, setting a pot to boil over burning logs? Choosing an apple to stick in his mouth? Sharpening a blade? Not that Riku thinks it would need one in order to do damage. It’s just standing– _floating_ –there, looking at him looking at things.

 

Away from where the sand meets the water is a pile of plenty of things for looking at. It’s like something out of a picture book, a dragon’s hoard. Maybe that’s what the beast is, a dragon, but it certainly doesn’t look like anything Riku’s ever associated with them.

 

Tentatively, he steps closer to the pile. The beast gets in his way, slipping quietly in front of him, leaning lower to the ground as if to impose Riku with the widest parts of its form. It makes no sound, nor any indication of what it will do if Riku tries to step around him, but he gets the message. No closer looks, then, not with a wall of monster standing guard.

 

Not for the first time, Riku’s hands go up in silent surrender.

 

“Okay, I get it. I’ll look from here.”

 

‘From here’ is literal; he makes no move elsewhere and finds himself looking through the heart-shaped gap like it’s a window. It should be visceral, but the space looks as if it would be smooth to the touch. He doesn’t. Touch it. He’s had his fill of this thing manhandling him and feels no desire to reciprocate.

 

That, and he’d like to stay in one piece. So he looks, and looks beyond, at the pile.

 

As far as he can tell, it’s all junk. That might be a harsh word to use, but he doesn’t see much in the way of gold and jewels the size of a fist like he’d expect in a hoard.

 

There are stuffed animals. Blankets. Books with titles he can’t make out. Wilted messes of flowers. Gowns that, while Riku’s not sure what kind of customs to expect of a world that’s proving to be unlike his own, he imagines are wedding dresses. Tins with their contents spilled messily from half-open lids–buttons, he wants to guess, but he can’t actually see that well and he thinks he might be imposing a childhood memory of staring disappointed at a cookie tin Kairi’s grandmother had left on the table which the three of them–himself, Sora, and Kairi–had greedily opened the moment she left the room.

 

Ribbons. Baskets. A section where all of the objects are blue-green, like perhaps somebody was collecting any bit of the color they could find. Paintings he’s never seen before that he can’t even begin to discern the value of, with people and landscapes he doesn’t recognize at all. It convinces him that maybe he’s looking at a painting himself through this hole, the monster’s body a frame.

 

Things. Random stuff. Out of place and bunched together on the shore of a beach at night like somebody had dumped the contents of a neighborhood’s houses into the ocean and let it wash up elsewhere.

 

It’s a mix of belongings that, if he had to guess, aren’t here by chance, and he’s only seeing a fraction of it through the hole.

 

“Did you take all of this…?”

 

It feels a little silly to try and converse. The monster stares impassively down at him.

 

Riku _knows_ it can understand, though, it must, or else why was he here, and not Sora and Kairi? There was nothing special about him that should have made him worth any more to it than two people. It could have even had the three of them. It had listened, though.

 

He thinks it’s listening now, too.

 

“These things… Why bother? What could you possibly need with any of it?”

 

Nothing, surely. Else maybe they wouldn’t be shoved together into one big, uncared for mass. He steps back and then to the side, peeking around the monster. It doesn’t stop him.

 

There’s more to the pile, more of the same wild assortments. Nothing stands out until he starts to look away from it.

 

There, resting on a black bed of rock are shocks of color, angled just so that he can vaguely make out the shape of stars. It’s far enough from the pile that he takes the chance in moving closer.

 

And closer.

 

The creature follows him, so close that Riku swears he can physically feel its shadow on him, light against the bare skin of his arms and at the nape of his neck.

 

It does nothing while he looks at the glass set on the stone. Three stars of blue, green, and orange, with faint gradients. At first, he thinks of them as nothing but baubles, but the longer he looks, the more he feels the islander within him stirring and wonders if his world has more in common with this one than he imagines. Back home, people made these charms all the time. They served as a connection between friends, a lucky charm, and in the right hands, a compass of the stars themselves, useful for navigation.

 

One of them is broken. Not significantly, but one of the metal rings that hold the pieces together is nowhere to be found, and with the see-through nature of the charm and the black backdrop of the rock, he can detect a hairline crack in the orange glass. Not thinking, Riku ventures to pick it up.

 

And then the monster yanks him back, startling a yell from him.

 

“Not… Ob-jects… For… You.” Each word is a clear labor. A mumble spoken between clenched teeth.

 

Riku’s response is a labor as well, but only because it feels like the wind’s been knocked out of him. “You can talk.” And, belatedly, “You copied me, what I said.”

 

The monster doesn’t keep the conversation going, but it can understand and _speak_ and Riku finds it difficult to keep thinking of it as a monster when there’s got to be something more here, a story. He might not be human, but there’s something very human _about_ him.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I only wanted to look, I won’t touch it. It must be important to you, right?”

 

He doesn’t get a verbal answer, but there is a nod, or at least a subtle shift of the other’s head that reads as one.

 

“And the other things, too? That pile? It’s important?”

 

They both turn their heads to look at it. Gently, the creature shifts his thumb to Riku’s cheek, prodding at him to turn his attention back to him.

 

Riku watches as he pointedly drags his other hand over the gap in his chest, resting fingertips along the edges that form the heart there. After a moment, that hand curls into a tight fist. Angry, maybe, but the voice that follows is delivered in the same strained way that makes it hard to tell what emotion is meant to be conveyed.

 

“Don’t… Know…”

 

It could be confusion, Riku thinks. Hurt.

 

Sora and Kairi might have to wait.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> as i was writing the scene where riku looks at the pile, i asked my friend if they thought he could reasonably, without having to readjust his position much, put his head right into terra's heart hole like one of those photo-op cutouts. i think the consensus is "yes, absolutely"
> 
> it's how you show you love your big monster boyfriend!
> 
> anyway, hope it's vaguely enjoyable so far. you can find me at [@twitter](https://twitter.com/promptologist) when you want to yell at me.


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